Geez since when did Neo Geo stuff become such a pain to maintain

[Big Bruno]

so as i posted been away for awhile, mainly just hitting up FB groups and the like.

so far I learned,

• All my MVS boards need to be checked for a impending death due to battery leakage --> what a pain so far i gone through a few of my boards (think i have like 10 including a IM dedicated which i never used) probably need to check the neo print as well.
• I need to buy some special cases for all my pricy homecarts to prevent sun fading, to be honest i do not even know if i could spot sun fading if i wanted to
• homecart prices (as well as everything else neo) has got more stupid
• their are lots of difference in AES system board revision I need to check for current modes (I have 4 systems 1 original not working due to a poor job of me trying to add a bios, 1 original never moded and 2 3-6)
• Unibios has gone up to 4.0 and no longer being updated. (i wanted to see if i could get the NGH numbers output via the selection connection)
• home brews and re-releases are still going on (was surprised to see the visco re-releases)
• the scammers have grown in numbers (pfft people need to stop trying to cheat people)
• there are lots more different mods out there
• new SNK if over merchandising everything (was surprise to see the release of the neo geo rental sign with the sticker)

Am I missing anything

so question on what i have not seen

• Did anyone every come up with a aes to mvs conversion (for the MVS board to play aes carts) just find it easier to access my unibios boards since my Main AES only has debug and i will not be remodded it and the MVS boards have socketed bios so easy to swap)
• Did anyone every come up with a home system replacement shell? I have a few trashed home systems i wanted to replace the shell. would be cool if someone machined one with pre mod outputs. always though a aluminum shell would be cool and shinny

in the meantime Big Howdy to all and yeah i know i can search forums but really who likes to keep doing that

since i was away, i have still been flying out to japan yearly except for last year and probably this year. hit up some SNK or related booths at tgs and have friends their that occasional get me stuff (last purchase with the Mia AES shirt.) I been at EVO and other FGT's a few times when it was live, kinda been staying away from ebay and yahoo auctions although started looking again. bought all the silly neo releases (Neo mini's, Neo x's and the AES stick ) hmmmmm house is a mess think i am now considered a video game hoarder made a retro room to play all my retro consoles with crt goodness (ps2, Neo and the like). discovering a lot of mystuff has stop working (my neo cd front loader all the sudden no longer boots up.)

 

[Atro]

so as i posted been away for awhile, mainly just hitting up FB groups and the like.

so far I learned,

• All my MVS boards need to be checked for a impending death due to battery leakage --> what a pain so far i gone through a few of my boards (think i have like 10 including a IM dedicated which i never used) probably need to check the neo print as well.
• I need to buy some special cases for all my pricy homecarts to prevent sun fading, to be honest i do not even know if i could spot sun fading if i wanted to
• homecart prices (as well as everything else neo) has got more stupid
• their are lots of difference in AES system board revision I need to check for current modes (I have 4 systems 1 original not working due to a poor job of me trying to add a bios, 1 original never moded and 2 3-6)
• Unibios has gone up to 4.0 and no longer being updated. (i wanted to see if i could get the NGH numbers output via the selection connection)
• home brews and re-releases are still going on (was surprised to see the visco re-releases)
• the scammers have grown in numbers (pfft people need to stop trying to cheat people)
• there are lots more different mods out there
• new SNK if over merchandising everything (was surprise to see the release of the neo geo rental sign with the sticker)

Am I missing anything

so question on what i have not seen

• Did anyone every come up with a aes to mvs conversion (for the MVS board to play aes carts) just find it easier to access my unibios boards since my Main AES only has debug and i will not be remodded it and the MVS boards have socketed bios so easy to swap)
• Did anyone every come up with a home system replacement shell? I have a few trashed home systems i wanted to replace the shell. would be cool if someone machined one with pre mod outputs. always though a aluminum shell would be cool and shinny

in the meantime Big Howdy to all and yeah i know i can search forums but really who likes to keep doing that

since i was away, i have still been flying out to japan yearly except for last year and probably this year. hit up some SNK or related booths at tgs and have friends their that occasional get me stuff (last purchase with the Mia AES shirt.) I been at EVO and other FGT's a few times when it was live, kinda been staying away from ebay and yahoo auctions although started looking again. bought all the silly neo releases (Neo mini's, Neo x's and the AES stick ) hmmmmm house is a mess think i am now considered a video game hoarder made a retro room to play all my retro consoles with crt goodness (ps2, Neo and the like). discovering a lot of mystuff has stop working (my neo cd front loader all the sudden no longer boots up.)

You were living under a rock the past 20y ?

 

[Heinz]

Welcome to a world where a JP NAM costs upwards of $200.

 

[Big Bruno]

You were living under a rock the past 20y ?

no 20 years is the silly tag the stick on my profile pic, well when i put all my stuff in storage kind of forgot about it, i have mvs stuff i still played with but since next gen been playing mostly ps3-5 stuff. i do throw rocks at kids in parks though

 

[evil wasabi]

Converters? Wow. Ancient dreams are the worst ones. Just get a neosd and transcend shitty tech.

 

[CORY]

in the meantime Big Howdy to all and yeah i know i can search forums but really who likes to keep doing that

Welcome back and feel free to talk Neo all you want Bruno, things have been slow on here these past couple of years.

Omega came up with a replacement MVS shell that made the carts look like AES ones (with sticker) but it stayed a proto and never reached the market. I think it was too expensive to produce iirc.

 

[HeavyMachineGoob]

For an answer to your question about AES cartridges to MVS board adapters, it never happened for two reasons.

1. AES games in general have steadily eclipsed MVS games in prices. Nowadays there’s no such thing as an AES game that is cheaper than an MVS equivalent, at least cheap enough to make buying an AES system worth it.

2. Converting AES to MVS is really not feasibly possible. The main issue is with the C ROM multiplexing (graphics rom chips).

In super simple non-technical terms, the graphics data in the cartridge is like a crumpled ball of paper and it must be flattened out before it hits the graphics chipset in the neo geo. there’s a chip (PRO-CT0, NEO-ZMC2, NEO-CMC, etc) that flattens out the sheet of paper. This chip is in AES carts and MVS boards. MVS to AES is very simple, you just put a NEO-ZMC2 or something in the converter.


In an AES to MVS conversion. You would have to do this to the graphics data:

crumpled -> flattened -> crumpled -> flattened

And somehow do that fast enough to not end up with distorted graphics. The neo geo expects to get graphics data within certain amounts of time which is usually very fast.

it might be possible to do the conversion with some extremely fast modern SOC chip or FPGA, but it ended up never getting explored due to cost and technical limitations of the time, plus there’s the whole explosion of aes game prices. There hasn’t been a practical use for such a converter in a very long time.

 

[Neo Alec]

No to both your questions.

I wouldn't worry about the maintenance issues. Battery removal is pretty standard. Even Xboxes have the clock capacitor that will ruin the system if not removed.

 

[NeoSneth]

as far as retro goes... neo geo is pretty low on maintenance...

 

[gray117]

Like any antiques?

Batteries in anything need replacing/removing/adding to an external holder. All batteries are temporary.
Power supplies are probably the one thing that are overlooked - easiest/safest is to get them replaced.
Capacitors - it's just a maintanence thing.
Paper shouldn't be in daylight let alone sunlight.

For everything else, it's welcome to the history club, time to join the re-enactment crews and the dubious joys of re-releases/scans/roms/books/documentaries.

 

[SignOfGoob]

With proper care the OG will outlast the emu boxes.